


Erasure

by RedGold



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Existential Crisis, Meta posing as Prose, moreso than it already has, something that really should be addressed on the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 18:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedGold/pseuds/RedGold
Summary: A meta posing as prose as Lucy comes to grips the fact that she is essentially in a time loop, one in which she continues to overwrite herself. And what she can do about it.





	Erasure

**Erasure**

Lucy was going to be erased. 

When her future self came back in order to save Rufus, Lucy hadn’t really thought about the consequences of those actions. Not until her future self was starting to leave. Then something Lucy had always knew hit her square in the chest.

“You go back,” Lucy says to herself, “I forget everything from this moment, and become you.”

“Maybe,” future Lucy says sadly. “I gave Flynn the journal on this trip and moved forward to today. If you go back and give Flynn the journal, then move forward… you replace me.”

She sees it in her own eyes, the fact that maybe this isn’t such a horrible thing. Bad memories outweighing the good. 

Another realization hits. “I replace you… until I go back again. I keep over-writing myself each time I deliver that journal. God, how many times have I done this?”

“I don’t know,” she says in a way that makes Lucy believe she has already thought long and hard on this subject. “But someone has to cut the loop, right? Make a world were we never have to go back again.”

Lucy watches the Lifeboat take off, knowing that no matter what happens, she will get the worst end of a stick that has no good ends. 

If she manages not to have to go back, then she will be replaced by the woman who just left. Someone battle-scarred and weary, who likely wants to forget.

If she does have to go back, there was no way to know if the new current Lucy, for she will be the future Lucy, will be able to cut the loop either. So either she is setting herself up to be erased, or takes over a life of someone who deserved to be happy. 

There was no good answer… save perhaps one. 

It had been in the back of her mind. She knows everyone probably thought about it once or twice—or in Flynn’s case, a lot. It seemed like the simplest solution, to all of their problems. But sometimes the easy way out is not the best.

But it is still an option, and they had to discuss it like a team.

“Wait,” Rufus holds his hand up from where he is sitting on a table, Jiya as his side, “you’re actually advocating killing a child?”

“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Lucy defends herself, a small part of her dying inside that she ever mentioned it. “But the truth is, we are stuck in a time loop of consistently going back and forth, erasing ourselves, changing others, and what is it all for? We say we’re saving the world, but we’re just… wrapping it in layers upon layers of duct tape hoping that it stays together.”

Everyone goes quiet, knowing she speaks the truth. They have a time machine, and time was never going to end. 

“The reason Rittenhouse hasn’t gone back and tried harder to take us all out in the crib,” Lucy continued, “is that it’s mutually assured destruction. No one wants to risk their own lives, right now. But what are these lives worth if we’re going to keep erasing them?”

“What you’re suggesting,” Wyatt pipes in with the steel voice of a military operator, “is tantamount to a suicide mission.”

“For me,” she breathes, “yes. But I’ve already lost my family, everything. This will just mean they never existed to die in the first place.”

“This is a very bad idea,” Flynn is a lot less calm. 

“You were going to kill John.” Lucy fought back. “What difference is killing his great grandfather?”

“I wasn’t in my right mind,” Flynn acknowledged without stuttering or breaking. He had come a long way since that night. The talking had helped in the healing of a wound that had never scabbed over. “If we take out Rittenhouse, we don’t know how much that will change the world. We know they had their hands in so many things. It could change history to the point that events occur that none of us are ever born.”

“That was your entire plan,” Wyatt pointed out harshly. “Remember?”

“And I was wrong.” Flynn glared at Wyatt, but then looked back to Lucy. “About a lot of things.”

“You were right about Cornwallis,” Lucy said quietly. “History found someone else to negotiate the Treaty of Amiens. People are going to be good, or they going to be horrible, with or without Rittenhouse. But I think we can all agree, without is the much better option.”

“Okay,” Agent Christopher stepped in to calm them down. “So assuming history is generally the same, how much would this affect us on a personal level? Would I lose my kids, Michelle?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy confesses. “There are so many possibilities, causes and effect, you saw how I lost my sister. And I know no one wants to think about it, but anytime we go back, we could do one thing, just one, and that could lead to any of us not being born because, I don’t know, we cause a traffic accident that somehow was the reason our grandparents met. We take that risk every time… and we don’t think about it.”

“Because we don’t want to,” Rufus admitted. 

Mason, who had been attentive and quiet to that point, started to speak. “Okay, but let’s look at this from a less dour, but just as realistic, perspective. I’ve had the idea for a time machine since I was a kid, and assuming I’m still born, I will still have it. But I’m not going to build it.”

“Because you were financed by Rittenhouse,” Agent Christopher interjected.

“Yes.” Mason sighed, his guilt always there. “I would have still hired Rufus, assuming he is born, sorry,” he apologized and Rufus just waved him off, it was the reality they were forced to reckon with right now. “I started failing, losing money, before I even started the time project. I was thinking of closing up different parts of my business, consolidating. It would have just remained a pipe dream.”

“And you wouldn’t have hired me,” Jiya pointed out, glancing over at Rufus. “We never would have met.”

“That one is up in the air,” Mason replied. “You’re still brilliant, Jiya. I just can’t predict if there would be a job opening, let alone one putting you two in each other’s path.”

“Unless you got a different investor,” Rufus said hopefully. 

“Like the US Government? Bezos?” Mason laughed. “You think they’d be any better than Rittenhouse?”

“Jessica will still be dead,” Wyatt says into the room, almost emotionless, but the pain is there. “Her original death had nothing to do with Rittenhouse. So unless taking out Rittenhouse somehow turns me into a better husband, she’s still dead.”

That laid a dark cloud over the room, just another layer to the heavy emotions permeating the space.

“You know,” Jiya was the first to speak again, “the only people to make it out of this okay are Denise, because your life will just carry on as normal, and—”

“No it won’t,” Lucy contradicted slightly. “Remember, we went back to 1981, and a by product of our meddling was repairing her relationship with her mother. Denise will still have Michelle and the kids, but that will be gone.”

Agent Christopher bowed her head slightly, then like a seasoned law enforcement veteran, she looked up and removed her feelings from the equation, at least at this juncture. She gave a sad little nod in acknowledgement of the truth.

“Who else,” Rufus asked Jiya. “You said people.”

“Flynn of course.” She gestured vaguely at him. “No Rittenhouse, no reason for them to come after him. His family lives. Which is the whole point of how this got started in the first place.”

Everyone turned to Flynn who had been just as quiet as Wyatt through most of the discussion once it was being taken seriously. Both men had their reasons.

“I’d still have the memory,” Flynn spoke and it hurt. “Still close my eyes and see them… like that. I can’t go back to them like this. For their sakes.”

“Not if you don’t go,” Lucy said, already predicting most of what was being said. “If you stay here, then you get overwritten. You never lose them. You’ll only lose Gabriel, but neither of you ever really knew him.”

“So, great,” Wyatt slapped his hands down on his thighs. “I lose Jessica, again, but hey, at least she’s not Rittenhouse. And don’t talk to me about overwriting myself as well. Either way that’s lose-lose for me.” He looks her straight in the eyes and she knows this isn’t the best time, their relationship, whatever it was, was in shambles. But he loves her. If he’s overwritten, he won’t remember that. But if he goes with her, Jessica is still dead, and Lucy cannot promise him any future.

Wyatt gives a side eye to Flynn and everyone knows what he’s thinking. Flynn gets his happily ever after, the man Wyatt has tried to kill so many times, who has been a bane to his existence. But he says nothing, because what would that solve, what would that prove?

“The only person who needs to be in the Lifeboat, is me,” Lucy tells them. “If I don’t go, I will be erased, completely from time. None of you will ever know I existed. You still won’t, actually, but I would at least be alive.”

So many quiet moments, so many thoughts, things people want to say but don’t because they don’t want to sound selfish.

“If I have to go alone, I will,” she continued. “I know it would take some time, but if you teach me how to fly the Lifeboat, I can go back, and none of you have to remember what we’ve been through.”

“Could you do it?” Flynn askes, his face a muddled mass of emotions. She knows he has feelings for her, but she doubts even he understands them. But even if they are love, she knows he’s thinking of Iris, and his love for her will overwrite anything. “Kill Rittenhouse?”

Lucy takes a slow breath. “Today? Yes.”

“We could go.” Rufus looks to Jiya, hopeful and sad at the same time. “That way, whatever our lives are when we get back, we’ll still have each other.”

Jiya holds his hand and squeezes it tight. “But what if one of us is married, like what happened with Lucy and Noah? I love you, Rufus, but we have to be honest with each other that it’s a situation we might have to deal with. Do we want to put ourselves through that? And I’m not sure I really want to keep this… gift that I have now.”

He stares at her, not quite heartbroken because Jiya is right, nothing they do will be without consequences. It’s simply a measure of what each of them is willing to accept.

“We don’t have to decide now,” Lucy says as she stands a little taller. “And I feel like it should be a unanimous decision when we do so. Think about it, about what role you want to play in it, and we can discuss it again when everyone is ready.”

They slowly walk away, she avoids looking directly at anyone, she doesn’t want to affect their decisions. 

Lucy has no idea how they will vote, and it will only take one hold out to put an end to it. But in truth, it doesn’t really matter to her either way. Whether she comes back to a world she never existed in, or continues the time loop of delivering Flynn the journal… 

Lucy Preston will be erased.


End file.
